All Rise...

The Charge

"They don't mean anything when I do them. Just a mess. Afterwards, I
find something to hang on to…Then it sorts itself out and adds up. It's
like finding a clue in a detective story."—Bill (John Castle), on his
abstract paintings

Facts of the Case

All facts are suspect.

All suspects have absconded.

There is nothing to see here.

The Evidence

I remember watching Austin Powers pull out that camera and demand the
attention of a squealing fashion model. I remember laughing. Was I the only one
laughing? Was I the only one in the theatre who got the joke? Mike Myers was
playing David Hemmings playing a shallow fashion photographer in Michelangelo
Antonioni's first English-language feature. I suspected that few people watching
Austin Powers have ever seen Blow-Up, and the few that had
probably remembered it more for its hip fashions and fusion jazz score by Herbie
Hancock. Oh well, nobody seemed to get the Russ Meyer joke either.

A viewer only mildly familiar with the work of Michelangelo Antonioni and
the Italian director's penchant for stunning visual compositions might assume
that David Hemmings's unnamed photographer in Blow-Up is a surrogate for
the man behind the bigger camera. After all, this London shutterbug seems
totally cool. He can have any woman he wants. He drives a fancy sports car. He
lives life as if he is racing toward a finish line he cannot even see. Who
wouldn't want to be this guy?

But appearances are deceiving. The photographer is a fairly unlikable brute.
He uses women, dresses them up and objectifies them through the camera.
Everything must be "fab" or "cool" to carry any weight. Such
weight, however, is only ephemeral: once the next fab thing comes along, all
that was once fashionable is jettisoned.

Blow-Up is, like all Antonioni's films, all about desire. The opening
credits are a clue: an empty green field (where the film will also wind up)
covered with letters that reveal bodies moving, as if we are looking into
windows, seeing through a placid surface to the chaos underneath.

A gang of—mimes? students on a bender? spirits of play?—charge
through the streets of London. These are the fake inhabitants, the simulations
that remind us that the rest of London is already filled with fakes who just
don't know it yet. One fake is our hero (David Hemmings), who never has a name.
Most writings on the film (and the Internet Movie Database) insist his name is
"Thomas," for no particular reason. His radio callsign is "Blue
439," so we will call him Blue, for lack of a better name. When we first
see Blue, he is leaving a workhouse, disguised as a common prole. But this is a
game: he has sneaked in so that he can photograph these poor men for a book that
proves his artistic talent. He says, "Hello, love" to his assistant at
the door to his studio, but he feels no desire for her. Everything he does is a
game of pretend.

Blue distracts himself from his emptiness by manipulating others, by forcing
himself to become a subject using everyone around him as objects. He is
particularly adept at using women. Antonioni, the master of negative space in
cinema, understands the pseudo-eroticism of fashion photography, having Blue
constantly intrude into our frame of reference during the photo shoots. It
becomes impossible to tell exactly who is posing for whom, as Blue climbs on top
of a bored-looking model (Verushka) and demands more and more from her writhing
body in a mock sexual act. Then, Blue ignores her as if he is a frat boy casting
off a drunken freshman girl.

As always, Antonioni's visual composition—his ability to give any shot
a sense of depth usually reserved for still photography—is peerless. Only
Stanley Kubrick could compete. Indeed, the influence of this film on Kubrick's
A Clockwork Orange is quite
apparent throughout, especially during the sequence in which Blue photographs a
group of women in surreal, futuristic fashions. He insists they close their eyes
so that he becomes the only watcher—then, while their eyes are closed, he
slips out the door and disappears.

Antonioni uses everything from architecture to bodies to the spaces in
between. Watch and listen to everything. Notice how Blue is left out of
everything, a watcher outside. He sees happy couples (straight and gay) walking
down the street, ignoring him. He is refused service in an antique store by an
old man who answers even obvious questions in the negative.

When people discuss Blow-Up, they always seem to focus on some sort
of plot. Well, here it is: Blue follows a couple into a park and photographs
them. The woman (Vanessa Redgrave) demands the film back. "This is a public
place," she tells him. "Everyone has the right to be left in
peace." Never mind that her logic is inverted here: how can you claim a
right to privacy when you are in the open? Blue instead offers an even more
cryptic response: "It's not my fault if there's no peace." Does he
mean that privacy, subjective integrity, cannot exist, since we can all be
watched? Is he making an oblique reference to the Cold War from which London's
hedonists are always distracting themselves? Is his cynicism a reflection of the
chaotic world around him?

This all becomes dizzying—and this is only a single moment in the
film, wound tightly. Later, Blue returns to his studio, only after another Cold
War clue: passing a no-nuke protest, he steals a sign marked "Go Away"
(separating its political context in favor of pure image), only to have it fall
out of the back of his car while he drives home. He does not even notice.

The woman from the park shows up at Blue's studio to recover her
photographs. Antonioni uses the room's architecture (wooden beams, glass panes)
to fragment their bodies. Answering a phone call, Blue claims that he has a
wife. Then he says that she isn't his wife, and that he "feels like"
he has kids. Another simulated relationship? The woman from the park flirts, but
nothing comes of it. He gives her the wrong roll of film, and in return, she
gives him a fake phone number. Everything is illusion.

Now comes the part that passes for a plot. Blue develops the roll of film
from the park. Following eyelines, he blows up sections of the photos and hangs
them around the room to construct a narrative. Is that a hand holding a gun? Is
that a dead body in the grass? Blow-Up is about fractals: blowing up the
image causes patterns to appear, iterations of tiny flaws ("no peace,"
remember?) in reality. Each blow-up causes more complexity, rather than
clarification. Photography, masquerading as the objective gaze, tells us that
seeing is believing, and that believing is truth. Blow-Up demonstrates
that only the first part of that statement is true.

When Blue goes to the park to investigate, he indeed finds a dead body, its
eyes open and unseeing. Later, he returns to his studio (after voyeuristically
watching his friends have sex) to find the pictures are all gone, except for the
one that shows the body. Or does it show a body, when taken out of context? Blue
races to find his editor Ron (Peter Bowles), hoping that someone can confirm
this reality. Thinking he sees the woman from the park, he stumbles into a
Yardbirds concert (check out Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck looking young and probably
not too stoned) as the band plays to a blank and lifeless crowd. When Beck
smashes his guitar after hearing feedback (chaos again), the crowd erupts
momentarily. Ron is equally quixotic, stoned beyond caring at a nearby party.
When Blue awakens in the morning (that party was just too tempting), he returns
to the park. Of course, the body is gone.

Then comes the kicker: Blue encounters that crowd of youthful mimes
pretending to play tennis. They invite him to participate. In his head, he
begins to hear the game. He stands alone in a field, then suddenly vanishes. The
end.

Angry that I just gave away the ending? Watch the film again. Each
iteration, it becomes something different. This time, pretend the body was
really there, that a conspiracy is afoot. Was that a spy watching Blue through
the window of a café? Now watch it again. Is the body only a dream? When
Blue is in the midst of his series of blow-ups, he takes some time off to cavort
with a pair of fame-obsessed bimbos. One moment, they are naked and wrestling.
Then suddenly, they are dressed. Was the sex play merely in his mind, or has
time broken apart? And why does he only notice the dead body after his sexual
arousal?

Blow-Up becomes a new film with each viewing, as a fractal reveals
new patterns each time you zoom in on it. Those looking for simple entertainment
might only want to approach the film as a portrait of London in the swinging
'60s, but for those who like a puzzle, Blow-Up will keep you busy for a
long time.

But do not expect the commentary track to clear up any of the film's
mysteries. Although Peter Brunette is a film professor and author of a book on
Antonioni, he offers very little interpretation, no behind-the-scenes gossip,
and even less on the career of Antonioni. In other words, this commentary
is—certainly not intentionally—as full of empty spaces as the film.
But Antonioni's empty spaces are always meaningful. Indeed, I have offered you
more clues and possible angles of interpretation in this brief review than
Brunette does in nearly two hours of talking. Brunette's refusal to offer any
theories, even tentatively, only manages to suck the life out of Antonioni's
masterpiece. Skip this commentary track at all costs.

Closing Statement

Apart from the fact that Warner Bros. has packaged Blow-Up with what
may be the single worst commentary track I have ever heard, I highly recommend
this disc. Antonioni's film is one that you can return to again and again,
discovering new clues even in the empty spaces. No director has mastered the use
of visual space as successfully as Michelangelo Antonioni, and Blow-Up
may ironically be his most accessible film for contemporary audiences.

Blow-Up is like a roll of Blue's photographs. The more he blows up
each frame, the more he discovers. The more he discovers, the less he can be
certain of. Clues contradict one another. Evidence vanishes. The emptiness of
his desire, the chasm inside him, mirrors the abyss that stares back from his
photographs. Do you still want to live in his world?